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Stacy Camacho wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Ive just started a new job and my manager has posed an interesting question:
> Is there one software tool that can be used for developing printed manuals
> that can easily be converted to PDF and online help? I couldn't think of
> any. If anyone know of any software that can do this, drop me a note.
Check the list archives for 'single source', 'SGML', 'XML', ... This problem
has been discussed several times.
What you want to do is certainly possible using Frame, prehaps with some
add-ons.
I don't think it is out of the question with Word. After looking at some
Word HTML output, I decided it was not worth the trouble last time I looked,
but that was Word 97 and things may have changed.
> Currently we are using MS Word to create printed manuals and the online help
> is being hard-coded in html.
Check www.easysw.com for their htmldoc tool. That will take a set of HTML
files and produce:
global HTML table of contents + HTML files with prev/TOC/next links
several formats as one big file, with TOC
PDF, with neat index
Postscript
HTML
Likely the best way to do this, certainly the way I'd choose for almost
any new project, would be to use XML and the DocBook DTD. For examples
of how such docs turn out, and info on free tools for building them,
see www.linuxdoc.org, the Linux Documentation Project site. For more
on DocBook, www.docbook.org and http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/.
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